Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

The Milk Chicken Bomb

By Andrew Wedderburn

Welcome to Marvin, Alberta, the fictional landscape of writer/musician Andrew Wedderburn’s debut novel. Starring “the kid,” an unnamed narrator who stands against the backdrop of the local meat-packing plant, amid Russian expatriates, smalltown antiheroes, bonspiels, ... Read More »

June 13, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Belle Falls

By Sherri Vanderveen

It’s a compelling opening for a novel: on a sunny afternoon, six-year-old Brennan Allister is riding his bike around his affluent neighbourhood when he disappears. Hours later, bruised, bitten, and wearing only his underwear, he ... Read More »

June 13, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Combustion

By Lorri Neilsen Glenn

Halifax poet laureate Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s second collection consists mostly of free-verse lyrics, prose poems, family memoirs, and occasional observations. Reading it, I couldn’t help but think of Canada Council director Robert Sirman’s recent plea ... Read More »

June 13, 2007 | Filed under: Poetry

Missing the Ark

By Catherine Kidd

Mining the animal kingdom for metaphors for the human condition, this flawed first novel by acclaimed Montreal spoken word artist Catherine Kidd provides a fascinating look into the lives of animals and the craft of ... Read More »

June 13, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Tablecloth Trick

By Rick Crilly

Toronto writer Rick Crilly’s debut is labelled as “experimental fiction” by its publisher. This is a fair statement. To less than a hundred pages of fragmented narrative Crilly adds 54 footnotes and 20 endnotes that ... Read More »

June 13, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Right Away Monday

By Joel Thomas Hynes

Clayton Reid, the booze-besotted, drug-addicted ne’er-do-well at the centre of Joel Thomas Hynes’s second novel, bears a striking resemblance to Keith Kavanagh, the shiftless antihero of Down to the Dirt, Hynes’s 2004 debut. Both are ... Read More »

June 12, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Darkwing

By Kenneth Oppel

It’s 65 million years ago, the last dinosaurs are dying out, and Earth’s mammals are living in a time of dramatic upheaval. Dusk is a small tree glider – a chiropter – who discovers that ... Read More »

June 4, 2007 | Filed under: Events